Damage prevention for cultural assets in times of climate change

Project duration: 05/2022 - 01/2024
Funding code: 67DAS242
Funding program: Measures for adaptation to the consequences of climate change
Funding focus: Development of educational modules on climate change and climate adaptation

Problem

Cultural assets in Germany are threatened by the effects of climate change. In particular, the increase in extreme weather events such as heat waves, extreme drought, hurricane-like storms, heavy rainfall, increased temperature fluctuations as well as the rise in sea level have immense effects. The preservation of our cultural heritage, whether cultural landscapes, ensembles, historic buildings including valuable interior decoration or museum collections, faces new challenges due to climate change.

While other countries such as Great Britain, Greece, Sweden or Norway are already intensively dealing with the effects of extreme climate events on cultural assets, this topic has not yet fully arrived in Germany. Climate events, such as last year's flood in the Ahr valley, continue to catch many institutions mostly unprepared.

One of the reasons for this is that there is virtually no research or resilient data on the quantitative impact of future extreme weather events in Germany as well as on the preservation of our cultural heritage. Cultural assets have also not been mentioned in the national climate change adaptation plan to date due to a lack of resilient data.

Methodology

Using information from existing high-resolution, regional climate modeling and its future projections, threat scenarios and action guidance for adaptation and protection from increasing extreme weather events will now be developed.
To this end, the topic of climate change and the understanding of the acute threat scenarios must be improved both in general in society and in particular among decision-makers and stakeholders in the cultural heritage sector. This is where the project comes in. In a multi-stage process, the effects of climate change on cultural heritage as well as adaptation strategies based on these impacts are to be communicated. In particular, monument owners and disciplines entrusted with monument protection, as well as future monument conservators are the target group here.

Approach

First of all, the available information on future damage risks will be processed in a disciplinary manner and transferred into transdisciplinary modules. This information will be conveyed in two different competence-oriented course formats - as a 5-day seminar in the Master's programme - Heritage Conservation at the University of Bamberg and as a continuing education course for monument conservators and those entrusted with cultural property in the form of a 2-day workshop. The workshops are designed as an interactive and practice-oriented course in which proven formats such as problem-based learning as well as further research results from the BMBF project mint.online are applied. In addition to climate and object monitoring on historical buildings, interactive training with "Risk Maps" from the EU project Climate for Culture will be used as topics in order to jointly create risk assessments for the respective locations or objects to be cared for by the course participants. This not only creates practical experience, but also personal relevance for the participants.

The project is being carried out together with the collaborative partners, the University of Bamberg and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft für angewandte Forschung e.V. 

The following Fraunhofer-Institutes are involved in the project:

• Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP
• Fraunhofer Center for International Management and Knowledge Economy IMW
• Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC
• Fraunhofer Academy